A major concern of software and digital content producers is the relative ease with which individuals may make illegal copies from their works. One only has to visit a black market website or certain neighborhoods (or countries) to find pirated digital content. To curtail electronic pirating, many software and digital content producers use Digital Rights Management (“DRM”) software configured to prevent illegal copies of digital content from being produced. However, it seems each new DRM innovation is only a speed bump for people that illegally copy and distribute software and digital content. For example, encryption techniques are used to control access and reproduction of software and other digital content. These known encryption techniques may control a number of times software is allowed to be installed or may require that the software or digital content periodically authenticate with a server. Other known DRM techniques have a one-time use activation code.
Despite the most advanced DRM software, there are well documented instances of pirates finding countermeasures. Many pirates have found ways to break an encryption code to reset the number of allowed software downloads (or reset the one time use limit). Many of these pirates have also found ways to spoof an authentication server to enable the operation or playback of pirated content. Such illegal actions have been estimated to cost software and digital content producers billions of dollars a year in lost sales.